Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 11-15 of 165
 SO DIFFERENT BUT OH SO SCRUMPTIOUS! April 29, 2008
Scott Daly (San Ramon, Ca United States)
15 out of 27 found this review helpful
I HAVE BEEN LISTENING TO THIS THIRD ALBUM FOR MANY MONTHS NOW AND I HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO PUT IT DOWN. SURE IT HAS MANY NEW SOUNDS BUT IT PUSHES PORTISHEAD INTO A WHOLE NEW WORLD OF GREAT MUSIC. PORTISHEAD A SEXY ROCK BAND? YOU BE THE JUDGE! AFTER MANY YEARS OF WAITING FOR ANYTHING NEW THEY TRULY DELIVER THE GOODS. BE SURE TO GIVE IT MORE THAN JUST ONE LISTEN BECAUSE LIKE ANYTHING GREAT IT GROWS ON YOU AND NEVER LET'S GO. IF YOU LOVE PORTISHEAD LIKE I DO YOU MUST CLICK YES! :)
 Tragically awful May 1, 2008
P. Cusick (planet earth)
15 out of 39 found this review helpful
"We really wanted to sound like ourselves but not sound like ourselves. It was always going to be difficult."
- Geoff Barrow (excerpt from Pitchfork interview, 04/07/08)
I hope no one thinks this is a statement worthy of contemplation, awe or any of the other misguided admiration we place upon contemporary musicians. It strikes me as yet another inarticulate rambling by a garden-variety, pseudo-intellect. And if you read the interview in its entirety, you found yourself dumbstruck at how utterly ordinary the members of Portishead sound (like, totally...). I, at least, had previously cultivated a perception of them being a savvy collection of renaissance minds, melding the headiest of musical genres to create Portishead. How dreadfully wrong I may have been.
Looking back, Dummy was and still is deserving of the universal plaudits it has received to date. Portishead, while not as revelatory as Dummy, if only for the fact that it came second, is equally deserving of its countless accolades. These two albums, along with releases by Massive Attack and Tricky, are commonly credited as being the prototypical blueprints of the trip-hop genre. Marked by a mysterious sensuality, expertly conceived sampling and accented by Beth Gibbons' halting vocals, Portishead have since been widely regarded as one of the most sophisticated acts since debuting in 1994. Portishead's newest effort, titled Third, represents the first offering from the Bristol trio in ten years. But was it worth the wait?
No one anticipated the release date of Third with more optimism and excitement than I. And while I hoped for Portishead to raise the lofty bar they established so many years ago, I am left hugely disappointed by what feels like an intentional effort to divorce themselves from the elements which made them so brilliant in the first place, if only for the sake of shrugging off their iconic sound as a means of maintaining their credibility as innovators.
Portishead's music has always been characterized by a level of tension. Whether through composition, lyrics, instrumentation, engineering or a combination of all elements simultaneously, Portishead have always relied on melancholy as a key element of their sound. In spite of their cloudy disposition, Portishead found a much larger and diverse audience than anyone ever expected, from sorority girls to flannel-wearing, coffee house misanthropes. All the while, Portishead have never straddled pop comfortably and maintained a status as outsiders and innovators.
However, their past music never asked so much of its listeners without a payoff. At the height of tension, Portishead's ability to pull back and offer some release has always been among their most sublime strengths. Third has no such release. Tension follows more tension until the listener is expected to accept a premise with no conclusion. For a band so adept at seamlessly blending the contrast of such smoldering sensuality and unnerving dissonance in the past, and for being credited as the touchstone for an entire genre of music, their latest effort represents a disturbing step backwards, rather than any sort of progression from their other releases.
Unfortunately, and not necessarily for the better, Portishead have only reinvented themselves. If their initial efforts can be credited with creating a genre, this venture falls painfully short of doing anything beyond changing the group's approach to its own music, rather than acting as the new standard bearer for their trip-hop denizens.
Portishead's stark departure from the sensual sound which gained them such a loyal following and nearly universal critical acclaim suggests that, while they desperately wanted to evolve their sound, the end result demonstrates only the ability to crudely deconstruct, rather than add depth to their brilliant foundation.
 Under a Gibbons moon. May 9, 2008
AllOverWith (L.A.)
14 out of 46 found this review helpful
This is the perfect album for the age all right. Nihilistic yet complacent, tortured yet insufferably smug, it's the sound of slitting your wrists open while sipping Bordeaux at a tapas bar with your bankruptcy lawyer friends who are really, really against global warming. It's the sound of people for whom Jesus is all right, but ultimately, just not as cool as Scott Walker. It is an existential hipster apocalypse of the first order, revealing the death-loving roots of the intelligentsia.
Those who say Portishead have moved past their commercial roots are mistaken. This will be playing in every Starbucks very soon, if it's not already. It's not a particular streamlined or smooth sound that makes a band acceptable these days. No, for music to reach the suicidal pornographic zombie mainstream, there is only one qualification -- it must express a void of spirit. "Avant-garde" acts like Portishead and Radiohead have that in common with Madonna or Christina Aguilera.
On the other hand, Third is the closest you can get to being a heroin addict without actually trying the drug. That feeling of being underwater, pushing through swaying seaweed, occasionally stumbling over the dead rotting corpse of a barely-remembered friend, just floating along, until one of the repetitive panic attacks like "Machine Gun" or "We Carry On" hits you. Not that I know from experience, it's just that I imagine it MUST be like this.
So for drug users, both legal and illegal, beatniks, operators of CCTV cameras, Prius drivers, U.N. functionaries, media types, modern-art lovers, people who believe in politicians, people with skull ornaments on their clothing, future suicides, vampires, witches and other assorted devil-worshippers -- though that all amounts to the same thing -- I must give this a solid five stars. For someone who prefers to fight their way through this life, discover the truth, and not succumb to the easiness of despair, you might be bored with the poison in Beth's heart, and limit yourself to my two.
Portishead like Bjork? May 2, 2008
G. Macciocca (San Francisco, CA.)
12 out of 38 found this review helpful
Portishead, like Bjork, produce music that is more and more dissonant with each album.
I completely love their first album, I like about half of their second and I barely like 3 songs of this third album.
I can understand dissonance done to have a certain sound, but this is too much. A bad album. Bad, bad.
Awesome! June 5, 2008
Wronghead
12 out of 21 found this review helpful
At first, I thought this album was terrible; with flat vocals and uninspired and pretentious noise filling in for the lush and skillful signature beats that launched an entire genre.
After three listenings, I still hated it.
After five, I hated it and I had a head ache.
However, after I read the reviews here, I realized that if I don't like this album, it must be because I just don't understand the music. I also realized that the thematic fulcrum of this album is heart-break and pain.
Then, suddenly, it hit me; I finally "understood."
This album gave me nothing but heart-break and pain.
It is living art.
Amazing.
If you hate yourself, buy this album. It's cheaper than buying two angry monkeys and recording them fighting each-other with power tools in your closet.
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